EDITORIAL: No 'buyer's remorse' for Destin

Published: Monday, July 14, 2014 at 06:03 PM.

What’s obvious from a transcript of an April 21 executive session of the Destin City Council is that the city, in trying to keep a strip club from opening on land that was zoned for exactly that kind of business, had painted itself into a corner. If it kept fighting the club’s owners in court, it would keep losing and the bills would keep mounting.
“It is likely that the city would not prevail in preventing the business from going where it is proposed to be located, and the city would end up with (having to pay) a damages award, too,” attorney Scott Shirley warned council members during the closed-door session.
A different, less costly option apparently wasn’t given much thought. The city could have let the strip club open and struggle to survive in a market that was unarguably hostile to that kind of enterprise, and in a part of town not easy for tourists to find. It likely would have closed sooner or later.
We’ll never know, because Destin officials opted instead to buy back the strip club’s contract and acquire the land on which it would’ve been built. Total cost: $2.15 million.
The buyout is old news, but the discussion during the executive session — first reported in this newspaper July 8 — provides insight into what lawyers and council members were thinking.
Mr. Shirley, for instance, urged the council to make a decision and stick with it. “One thing you don’t want to do is … be influenced subsequently by public debate and have buyer’s remorse and change your mind,” he said.
Although council members faced a backlash on our Opinion pages and on social media, they were buoyed by strong support from Destin residents and church members who had packed city meetings.
So we’ve detected no buyer’s remorse so far.
But as the $2.15 million buyout starts to weigh on the city budget, and as Destin faces the precedent it has set — that it actually paid a business to go away — there may yet be second thoughts. What’ll be the next business to ask for a fat check in return for pulling out? The city could well have painted itself into another corner.

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What’s obvious from a transcript of an April 21 executive session of the Destin City Council is that the city, in trying to keep a strip club from opening on land that was zoned for exactly that kind of business, had painted itself into a corner. If it kept fighting the club’s owners in court, it would keep losing and the bills would keep mounting.
“It is likely that the city would not prevail in preventing the business from going where it is proposed to be located, and the city would end up with (having to pay) a damages award, too,” attorney Scott Shirley warned council members during the closed-door session.
A different, less costly option apparently wasn’t given much thought. The city could have let the strip club open and struggle to survive in a market that was unarguably hostile to that kind of enterprise, and in a part of town not easy for tourists to find. It likely would have closed sooner or later.
We’ll never know, because Destin officials opted instead to buy back the strip club’s contract and acquire the land on which it would’ve been built. Total cost: $2.15 million.
The buyout is old news, but the discussion during the executive session — first reported in this newspaper July 8 — provides insight into what lawyers and council members were thinking.
Mr. Shirley, for instance, urged the council to make a decision and stick with it. “One thing you don’t want to do is … be influenced subsequently by public debate and have buyer’s remorse and change your mind,” he said.
Although council members faced a backlash on our Opinion pages and on social media, they were buoyed by strong support from Destin residents and church members who had packed city meetings.
So we’ve detected no buyer’s remorse so far.
But as the $2.15 million buyout starts to weigh on the city budget, and as Destin faces the precedent it has set — that it actually paid a business to go away — there may yet be second thoughts. What’ll be the next business to ask for a fat check in return for pulling out? The city could well have painted itself into another corner.